


Things We Lost in the Fire

by Noscere



Series: Nested Gold [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: 5+1 Things, Cultural Revolution, For The Revolution, Freedom Fighters, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 15:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7366750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noscere/pseuds/Noscere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every revolution starts with the people.</p><p>A prelude to a certain character's appearance in Sunshade, Nightlight, and backstory for the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Lost in the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone you know is lying to you. But don't worry. We'll take care of you.

Sun Wukong is six, and life in simple.

Their village is small, set in the coastline of Vacuo, in the Southern peninsulas. " _Wei ba de hong zi_ ," it's called on the maps tucked carefully in the elders' houses. Their life is battered by the rains cascading down the mountain sides and the earthquakes that rumble through their homes, but they are resilient. 

Landlord _Tianshen_ runs a longing hand over the silver _jian_ kept on his mantle. " _We are in this together_ ," he says in the reedy whisper of their village tongue. The scars pockmarking his arms shine in the firelight. " _Together, we forge ourselves into something better. It has always been this way. We have never known anything but this village._ "

(Little does he know that _Tianshen_ is lying. A veteran of the Great War, a defender of Faunus rights, reduced to a landowner in the wildlands of Vacuo.)

 

Sun has hazy memories of potlucks, held in the village square, with laughter and sons that last long into the lantern-lit night – sticks of incense sitting in clay pots, their heady smoke rising to the heavens along with burnt offerings to the ancestors, curated by the grandmothers – buttery candies that melt on his tongue, given from their landlord in return for a cut of the harvest. He knows the fields well: green lines of rice sprouting from the muddy waters behind their tiny hut, that must be replanted every spring when the snow melts and the rich earth is laid bare. If you’re quick fingered, dinner lies in the silvery carp that weave their way between the shoots. Half a day’s walk away lies the sea – the glorious blue expanse, dotted with the sails of his father’s boats and trawlers that rake the waves for bounties of shrimp. When the boats roll in, everyone comes down to the docks and hauls the nets in, to share the catch with the entire village.

In spring, the village marches to the cemetery set in the mountainside, and cleans the graves of their ancestors. They leave offerings of charcoal-baked fish, sweet persimmons still sun-orange from the winter harvest, bamboo shoots carved into delicate gamboling animals, and scraps of silk in place of money. The fish is a gift from the fishermen - the persimmons a gift from the farmers - the bamboo a gift from the carpenters and artisans - and the silk the gift of the landlords.

" _Never forget who we are_ ," baba says as he sets a loving hand on the grave of Sun's  _mei mei_. His little sister almost cost his mother her life. " 

Some years bring bad harvests, and other years bring empty nets. But the village is in for the long haul together.

In Summer, the Solar Festival leaves the village bedecked in orange lanterns and the doors - swept clean - are always open. Any child could walk into the landlord's home and find a small meal waiting for them in the antechamber. The landlords tend to keep to themselves (the elders whisper of screams and pained sobs in the night and early-morning visits to the apothecary in the morning, as if ghosts have left the mountainside to haunt the ornate homes), but during the Solar Festival, they mingle freely with the villagers.

“ _A single chopstick is weak_ ,” _Wai po_ says. Sun’s maternal grandmother gathers the children into a small circle around the fire, holding a chopstick in her wizened right hand. She quickly breaks the bamboo stick in two. “ _But together_ ,” she gathers many old and broken chopsticks, meant for kindling, into her hand. _Wai po_ attempts to break the chopsticks over a bony knee, but they resist. “ _Together, we are strong_.”

In fall, the harvest comes, and everyone must gather the rice and fruit and prepare for the winter ahead. The fields are singing in the brook-burble of the village's common tongue. Boys like Sun are tasked with keeping the fires lit during the night, to keep tigers and Grimm away from unsuspecting workers.

" _It wasn't always this way_ ," Old Houyi says, leaning on his scythe. Though he is only thirty, his hair is already thick with grey. The bonfire light curls over the knotted scars in the Huntsman's skin. " _Once, there were Huntsmen who roamed this land, clearing the filth from this world. But the war took them away. Now, there is only us_."

" _How did you get your scars?_ " Sun asks, but the Huntsman focuses on the red eyes glowing in the dark.

Winter is cold and dark: some years bring Nevermore attacks, others bring relentless snow. They rely on the fishermen to bring home dinner. The farmers' wives walk out to the frigid sea, and clad only in heavy bamboo cloaks, dive for shellfish and kelp. Old Houyi accompanies them, but there are still boats that never return, and the survivors tell tales of dark beasts that cracked bamboo ships in two and dragged good men and women to their deaths. They mourn the deaths in the bonfires that light the night, and send offerings of shrimp shells and rice husks to those they have lost.

Together is a song that binds them together, written in the legends passed down at firesides and the prayers inscribed in sticks of incense. Sun has never known anything else.

“ _Family_ ,” the village chants during the Winter Night Festival. “ _Ancestors, hear our pleas: protect us from war, keep our nets filled, teach our children the old ways, keep our children safe_.”

Nothing really changes in this tiny village. At least, he would, if a school hadn’t recently been built near the village square.

 

“ _This is an opportunity!_ ” the teacher proclaims as she rolls out a scroll. Flecks of snow dot the mud at her feet. She’s a stranger, dressed in the rough rice-garments of their homes, but with bright red cat ears poking out of her white locks.

“ _Chun tian_ is back!” _wai po_ says.

 _Chun tian_ bows to her. “ _Yes, wai po, and I bring good news for our families_.”

 _Wai po_ nods. The implicit permission breaks down the barriers, and the villagers swarm around the scroll. Few of them can read the words printed on the rough paper.

“ _We have been kept here for too long!_ ” the teacher continues. Her cat ears are flat against her head. _“Shoved aside after a war that was not of our_ making?" Tianshen shakes his head. _"They have forgotten that we are people too! But I have learned. I know their language, I know their ways! This is our chance to leave this village, and leave better futures for our children! I can teach you, and we will all walk forward!”_

His mother and father trade glances.

“ _Mama, baba, why do you look so unhappy?_ ” Sun asks, but they do not answer his questions.

Frustrated with the lack of answers, he curls up in the nest of sackcloth and hay he calls his bed, and wakes for dinner to cook.

“ _Why would Chun tian care about us?”_ his mother hisses over the burble of _mi zhou_ in the cast-iron pot. “ _She’s been gone for a decade, and we’re in the middle of nowhere! This can only mean trouble!_ ”

“ _Don’t ask questions_ ,” his father says as he mends the nets. “ _This could be good for our son. He deserves a better future than we do._ ”

" _We fought for something_ ," she grumbles, " _and what did that get us?_ "

" _Hush. He'll hear you_."

 

Not everyone in the village is as uneasy. Some families send only the eldest to the new school, to learn the language the teacher calls _Atlesian_ , _the language of the Accord, the language that branded us sub-human and traitors_. Others rotate their brood - the eldest during the winter, the youngest during the summer – to keep hands in the fields and seas.

After much argument, mama grudgingly sends Sun to the schoolhouse.

He is seven now, and the village's peaceful façade is beginning to fall away. Sun learns that their village is part of many, nestled in the mountain chain, and many homes have knives and guns - too weak to fight Grimm, barely enough to kill a tiger – despite a lack of war threatening their borders. He sees the bruises left on the cheeks of merchants who return to the village with light carts and lighter pockets. He's fast on his feet, and hard to see, and so he hears more than he should.

Something is changing in the world he thought he knew.

There are whispers that the land will not last them much longer, the fields too used to provide good harvests any longer. There are whispers of poisons poured into the water source and villages that empty overnight. There are whispers of harsh men, ear-less and tail-less, who cut off the traits that make the Faunus special and stiff the merchants or worse, refuse to do business. The village needs silk, and plaster, and metal, none of which come from their mountainside home. There are whispers that such men gave Houyi the thick scars lining his arms and are the source of the ghosts that haunt the landlords' homes. There are whispers that the Grimm will overrun the village if Houyi should die.

There are whispers of Guards on the horizon: men and women masked in the color of the stars, armor so bright and glaring as if they are made of condensed novas. They wear black – black, they say, for the dead and those who should have rights.

In the tiny schoolhouse, Chun tian plasters a poster of the White Fang next to the blackboard. Three masked women, all with tails and ears poking prominently out of their uniforms, stand proud against the blood-red background.

“ _Fight for your rights_ ,” she says, rapping the bamboo table with her long nails. “ _We deserve better._ ”

 

* * *

 

Sun is eight, and he doesn’t understand why everyone in his tiny Vacuoan village is suddenly so harsh.

There are more people in the village - soldiers who bear the White Fang's crest and arms and who patrol the borders when night falls. They speak of revolution, and burning away the past that keeps the Faunus bound.

The whispers grow louder. They speak of a massacre at a faraway place called Menagerie, and a Dust company named after Schnees.

The landlords do not get along with the White Fang.

" _We fought before!_ " Tianshen howls, kicking the soldier away from his home. Sun pauses his calculations, and watches from roof of a nearby home. " _It only brought us pain! Don't drive us back into that hell!_ "

The soldier is thin and reedy, and she scowls as she wipes the mud from her shirt.

" _You'll pay for this, collaborator!_ " She spits on the ground before his house. " _You only keep us chained!_ "

 

* * *

 

Sun's family stops cleaning the graves every spring. His father tells him, " _Don't rock the boat,_ " when Sun asks.

 

* * *

 

Sun is ten, and the village is together no more.

They stand in the village square - artisans leveling uneasy stares at the fishermen and the farmers who mutter threats at the men bound before them. Tianshen and Houyi are both  helpless in the streets they once walked. There are stones in every hand - chunks of the mountain carved out by fury and pick axes once meant to drive away Grimm.

" _But I don't want to throw stones_ ," Sun had said as he hefted the rock. It was as heavy as a good carp that would feed a family of three.

" _Act like everyone else_ ," mama had said in a whisper. She looked around the tiny village house, the scars carving her face stark in the light of the cooking fire. " _Don't ask questions._ "

 

There is screaming now, of war under those who march with the White Fang's banner. There are cries for blood - the Huntsmen and landlords collaborated with the humans, and reduced the Faunus villagers to pitiful remnants of their original glory. But the White Fang will restore that glory. The White Fang will keep the village safe. All they ask is that the collaborators die.

“The revolution has started! Death to those who would keep us bound!” the White Fang enforcer cries. He kicks Tianshen's back. "They would see us slaves, but we say no more! Death to Tianshen and Houyi!"

"We tried to protect you!" Houyi says. His scythe lays just out of reach.

"Don't make the mistakes of the past!" Tianshen struggles against his bindings. "Don't–"

The two men are immediately silenced by the thuds of hundreds of stones thrown at their prone bodies.

Blood leaks from the corpses of men Sun once knew and trusted.

"This had to happen," the White Fang soldier says, kicking over Houyi's corpse. The man's sightless eyes stare up at the summer skies. "The old must die, and give way to the new."

Beside him, mama and baba begin to fidget.

“Zàofǎn yǒulǐ!” The White Fang soldier cries. He plants a foot on Tianshen's bloodied back. “We will be free!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd just like to make it very clear that this story is fictional, and not based on any historical event. 
> 
> That being said, I'd like to point out that Sun's initial narration at the beginning of the story is very rosy because he's a kid. Most things seem brighter when we are kids.


End file.
